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Title: Insights into Nitrate Reduction over Indium-Decorated Palladium Nanoparticle Catalysts

Journal Article · · ACS Catalysis
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5]
  1. Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment
  2. Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States). Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
  3. Univ. of Houston, TX (United States). Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
  4. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States). Chemical Engineering
  5. Rice Univ., Houston, TX (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Dept. of Chemistry, and Dept. of Materials Science and NanoEngineering

Nitrate (NO3-) is an ubiquitous groundwater contaminant and is detrimental to human health. Bimetallic palladium-based catalysts have been found to be promising for treating nitrate (and nitrite, NO2-) contaminated waters. Those containing indium (In) are unusually active, but the mechanistic explanation for catalyst performance remains largely unproven. Here, we report that In deposited on Pd nanoparticles (NPs) (“In-on-Pd NPs”) shows room-temperature nitrate catalytic reduction activity that varies with volcano-shape dependence on In surface coverage. The most active catalyst had an In surface coverage of 40%, with a pseudo-first order normalized rate constant of kcat ~ 7.6 L gsurface-metal-1 min-1, whereas monometallic Pd NPs and In2O3 have nondetectible activity for nitrate reduction. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) results indicated that In is in oxidized form in the as-synthesized catalyst; it reduces to zerovalent metal in the presence of H2 and reoxidizes following NO3- contact. Selectivity in excess of 95% to nontoxic N2 was validated for all the catalysts. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations indicate that submonolayer coverage amounts of metallic In provide strong binding sites for nitrate adsorption and they lower the activation barrier for the nitrate-to-nitrite reduction step. This improved understanding of the In active site expands the prospects of improved denitrification using metal-on-metal catalysts.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0011983; AC02-05CH11231; AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1485307
Journal Information:
ACS Catalysis, Vol. 8, Issue 1; ISSN 2155-5435
Publisher:
American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 125 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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